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Royal Mail receives Awards for doing the Obvious

Yes, that’s right folks!

The World Class Manufacturing Association presented Royal Mail with three bronze awards for its achievements, partially for determining “that dust fibres from envelopes were the cause for frequent stoppages of the mail sorting equipment. From a machine stopping every 1,400 letters, it can now run for several shifts without any problems.” Machine operator Marcelo Suarez-Mori said: “We cleaned every part of the machine to get it back to a ‘factory-fresh’ condition and organised a cleaning rota among the shifts and this has improved productivity by reducing the number of stoppages”

Imagine that! What a concept!

All of us in the mail sorting business know (or at least we thought) that keeping a mail sorting machine free from ANY foreign material is the key for the machine running in tip-top shape. For example: A small but vital component, called a photo-eye (photocell) sensor does not function very well, when coated in dust. That is why most Postal Operators are performing daily preventative maintenance, which entails cleaning photocells.

Is it possible that Tim Jones, Head of World Class Mail at Royal Mail, has never heard of preventative maintenance? Does Royal Mail understand what preventative maintenance entails?

One can only imagine the enormous time, effort and funding expended to come to a conclusion that is as obvious as the nose on my face. And could it be that The World Class Manufacturing Association has a surplus of bronze awards to hand-out?

Either way, ‘Postal Sanity’ has now established its own yearly award program. Although the year isn’t over yet we cannot think of anything or anybody being able, within this year, to top Royal Mail’s achievement in their quest to keep sorting machines running at top performance levels.